An Inconveniant Summoning
by celticfox
Summary: Christopher Chant is summoned to Bartimaeus' world. Curses on the practical joker who put the august title of Chrestomanci in that accursed book!


**Hi, this is the great Celticfox! This idea just grabbed me and wouldn't let go- what if Chrestomanci was summoned to Bartimaeus' world? In the story he has apparently been summoned there multiple times, poor soul. This story is set about twenty years after Ptolemy's Gate. Diana Wynne Jones owns Chrestomanci, Jonathon Stroud owns Bartimaeus and Kitty, and I own Kate(yippee! My first OC!). I'm probably going to use Kate again- I really like her.**

Kate was feeling very nervous. Her mother smiled at her. "It's all right to be a bit afraid, but don't worry. Uncle and I will make sure the demon doesn't hurt you."

Kate smiled back. Her mother was very comforting. She was certainly not beautiful- she looked like she was thirty years older than she actually was- but she was very intelligent and wise. Kate turned to look at Uncle Bartimaeus. He wasn't actually her uncle; he was a demon too, a djinni to be precise, but he was very good friends with Kate's mother and her family. He usually looked like a teenager about her age or a little older, Egyptian, with scuffed sneakers and ripped jeans. He grinned. "It's okay, Junior." He always called her Junior, because she was named after her mother, but no one ever called either of them Katherine. Kate was Kate, and her mother was Kitty. That was all there was to it.

She turned back and concentrated on the pentacle in front of her. She was also in a pentacle, and Mother and Uncle Bartimaeus were in separate ones. She started the incantation, ending with, "And I summon thee, dread demon- umm-" she glanced at the book open below her and chose a name at random, "Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci! Chrestomanci!"

"What sort of a name is that," Bartimaeus muttered.

Then the air over the pentacle blurred, and a man appeared. He wasn't all that tall, but he held himself so that he looked grand and imposing; he had a sort of handsome face with shiny brown hair; he had an extremely vague, bemused look on his face and he was dressed immaculately in eighteenth-century clothes. He didn't _look_ threatening, but then, demons could change their appearance at will.

Bartimaeus started his pep talk. "Now, listen, bud, how about we make a deal-"

However, he was interrupted by the strange man looking at the pentacles and started to tear out his hair and moan. "Oh god no, oh please god not this place, god no..."

Bartimaeus paused, confused. "Say what?" he demanded.

The demon straightened and stared in a harried way out from under his mussed hair at them, and said imploringly, "Oh god please listen, please believe me, I'm not a demon-"

Uncle started to laugh. "Oh come on! Like we haven't heard that one a million times before!"

The demon stared at them with hollow eyes. "I know you won't believe me, but I'm a person, my name's Christopher Chant, I live with my wife and children in world 12A-"

"Ha ha, very funny- what? World 12A?"

"Yes, unless I'm summoned-"

"Ha!" Kitty cried. "Gotcha! How can you be summoned if you're not a demon?"

The man said, bemused, "Job description."

"_What?!_"

Patiently, he explained, "I'm the Chrestomanci, or magic regulator, for world 12A. Sometimes I do other jobs in other universes. There's a spell on my job that means if someone says "Chrestomanci" aloud three times and wants me to come, then I have to."

"Whoa, other universes?" Bartimaeus asked. "Sounds like a load of hogwash to me." He turned into a pig, then back into the boy.

"Look, could you please just let me out of this pentacle so I can get home?"

"If you're human," Kate asked cunningly, "why can't you just step out?"

The demon/Christopher Chant sighed. "Since you summoned me inside the pentacle, it binds me, and my magic can't deal with it. Ah, curses, curses upon the practical joker who put the title of Chrestomanci in that accursed book!"

"Your magic? But people don't have any magic." Uncle Bartimaeus shuddered. "Except for those freaks in the Makepeace conspiracy- but that's beside the point."

"Maybe not in your universe. Look, why don't you just say my name three times outside a pentacle?"

"If I step outside the pentacle, worm, as you very well know, you will be free to messily devour me," Kate answered. Mother had been very emphatic about that, and Uncle had described several punishments he had inflicted upon foolish mortals. Kate felt queasy at the mere thought.

"How about one of them then." He pointed to Kitty and Bartimaeus.

"Fine," Bartimaeus snapped, and stepped outside his pentacle. "Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci."

And the man vanished and reappeared outside the pentacle! Bartimaeus immediately threw a protective Shield around Kate and he mother, but nothing else happened.

Then Chrestomanci exclaimed, "Yes! Someone else summoned me! Cheerio!" and vanished.

Kate, Kitty, and Bartimaeus glanced at each other in mutual confusion.

**So, how did you like it? Review!**


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